Unintended Consequences: Spawn as “Superman Black”

Abstract

ABSTRACT: While arguably the most popular and successful Black superhero in comic books, Spawn, the former CIA assassin Al Simmons turned agent of Hell, rarely exhibits his racial identity. The creator of Spawn and one of the founding members of Image Comics, Todd McFarlane, remarked that he wanted to make Spawn a super-hero “who happened to be black,” thus trying to transcend racial identity through the superhero genre. This attempt at transcendence, however, results in the suppression of Spawn’s racial identity, and ultimately an affi rmation of the superhero genre’s logic as a logic of whiteness. With the help of Frantz Fanon and numerous comic studies scholars, I will look at Spawn’s actual body, his super suit, and the rare moments of Black identity allowed him by McFarlane as a site of Spawn entering into the “bodily schema” of the superhero. After this analysis, I will use James Lamb’s idea of “Superman Black” to frame McFarlane’s wish to suppress and minimize Spawn’s Black identity and reveal how that suppression and erasure becomes integral to Spawn standing on his own as “Superman Black.”